Thread by @BretDevereaux

This is an entirely fair question in response to my article in @ForeignPolicy on why we ought to avoid the term warrior (foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/19/uni…), so let's answer it. 1/25

https://twitter.com/EmanThinks/status/1386001467052498945

First, we need to think about the state of the civ-mil. Is the civ-mil relationship generally good and healthy, as @EmanThinks 's argues?

I think the evidence suggests, no, the combination of changing attitudes and GWOT indicate that the civ-mil relationship is not great, 2/25

I would certainly not be the first to point out that it is a problem the huge gap between public trust in civic institutions and public trust in the military. As Lindsey Cohn noted in 2018 in War on the Rocks (warontherocks.com/2018/03/the-pr…) the growing tendency...3/25

...to use veterans and active duty personnel as policy debate 'trump cards,' even on debates about non-military matters has substantial negative impacts.

Of course that dovetails with an increasingly clear sense, contra Clemenceau, war is to be left to the generals. 4/25

Cohn (cited above) notes this in the context of the 'adults in the room' during the Trump administration, but of course the Biden administration turned around and for the second time in four years violated a long-standing norm against having generals as SecDef. 5/25

Suggesting, frankly, there is no norm there at all anymore, but rather a perception that the job ought to be held by the military. As I noted in my FP piece, creating such an organizational ouroboros is dangerous; on the dangers see: amazon.com/Absolute-Destr…

6/25

And while @EmanThinks contends that most soldiers have not developed a service exceptionalism (viewing soldiers as different from, or better than, civilians) - and I am sure this goes for him and his own experience - recent studies have suggested otherwise. 7/25

Take for instance the recent paper published by Bryant, Swaney and Urben in the TNSR: tnsr.org/2021/02/from-c… which notes clear evidence of a growing sense of exceptionalism within the officer corps. 8/25

That might not be too much of a problem if the ranks of the military broadly reflected America's own political and cultural divisions, but as Bryant et al. note, they do not. Contra the blithe assertions of the Gates Commiss, the AVF does not look like America... 9/25

...nor does it have the composition a draft-based force would.

The same study also notes that nearly a third (29.82%) of West Point cadets *strongly agreed* with the idea that civilians shouldn't criticize the military. 10/25

Evidently those West Point cadets need remedial courses on their Clausewitz.

Mercifully, the number was lower for serving officers, but of course today's cadets are tomorrow's officers. 11/25

And of course we have to note that before the last election, every living former secretary of defense *felt it necessary* to signal to the military that they shouldn't, you know, do a coup against the democracy washingtonpost.com/opinions/10-fo… 12/25

Such things are not necessary in good civ-mil.

Moreover, the concern wasn't empty. Veterans make up c. 6% of the general population, but seem to have made up something like 20% of early arrests in the Capitol Insurrection: npr.org/2021/01/21/958… 13/25

So evidently *despite* the desperate pleas of 10 former SecDefs, a meaningful number of veterans *did* take it upon themselves to try to unseat the lawful transfer of power within our civilian institutions.

What might possibly have made them feel they had the right? 14/25

So is the civ-mil relationship healthy? Clearly not! There is a growing sense among service personnel that they are both set apart *and better* than civilian. Does warrior-ism drive this, or reflect it? I don't know, but either way it has to go as a signal of the... 15/25

...values that the force is going to adopt moving forward. Organizational culture flows down from the top, and 'warrior ethos' and 'warrior restaurant' nonsense signals that the top is on board with this warrior-ism, despite its baleful consequences. 16/25

That has to change and it is long past time for the civilian authorities - Congress, the President - to do their jobs and make it change.

And to be clear, the culture of the military has *not* always been like this. 17/25

The 'warrior ethos' was added to the Soldier's Creed only in 2003 - the old version of the Creed had no reference to being a warrior, but it did have a line about "restrain[ing]...Army comrades from actions disgraceful..." which got nuked out of the current version. 18/25

The pro-warrior literature isn't that old either. Gates of Fire - the perennial target of my ire - was only published in 1998.

Read some WWII veteran memoirs - 'warrior' is, in my experience, a very rare descriptor for military personnel. 19/25

Finally, @EmanThinks makes the argument that a 'warrior' mindset improves cohesion. It may well, but if it improves cohesion at the cost of the civ-mil relationship, it is worse than useless.

This is the exact mistake of elevating operational/tactical considerations...20/25

...to the strategic level. Cohesion and lethality cannot trump strategic considerations - if greater lethality comes with a threat to the democracy, you accept lower lethality.

Because - as Clausewitz says (drink!) - policy must rule. 21/25

It is striking to me that this particular error in military thinking is exactly the one that tends to occur when military decision-making is insulated from civilian policy, see e.g. I. Hull above, or S. Ienaga, The Pacific War (1978).

Perhaps there is a problem after all? 22/25

This kind of argument often comes with the suggestion that civilians don't understand and shouldn't have an opinion which just leads us right back up to tweet 3.

"The civ-mil is great and also if you are a civ and you disagree, shut up" is a self-refuting argument.

23/25

Finally, I want to stress again that this shift to warrior-ism, and the mil-exceptionalism isn't the age-old thing that many current folks serving think it is - it's an artifact of the GWOT era and doesn't go back much further than that. 24/25

But since the GWOT turns 20 this year, most current personnel know nothing else.

And that is a real proble, which needs addressing sooner, rather than later. end/25